Endgame
by robinwitch1
Summary: Bill is dead; Francis is dead; Louis is dead; and Zoey is on the run alone, slowly losing her mind. Will she make it to rescue before it's too late for her?


**Endgame **

**Chapter One: Dreams**

Slumped on the floor, Zoey stared at the rifle across her knees and tried to collect her thoughts. So long since she'd slept. She couldn't remember how long. She couldn't remember anything, really. Her eyes drifted up and down the long gleaming barrel and she heard Louis say again with a touch of awe in his voice, "That is one beast of a gun!" They'd found it with what remained of a military patrol out at what must have been intended as a barricade to block traffic on the highway; that, and the pair of infrared goggles that still hung around her neck. Useful things. They were the infected, not the undead, after all, and most of them seemed to be running hot. They lit up like Christmas trees in the goggles. The only exception was the witch; she was cold, cold and dark, but she usually made enough noise to warn of her presence without need of mechanical aid.

A gust of wind sent a box in a long clattering tumble down the street outside. Zoey slumped and closed her eyes. _Think. _Her mind was wandering. What had Louis called it? He knew a lot about guns. Had known. A Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. Military issue. He'd said he'd never fired one. Civilians had been discouraged from owning them. They made airport security and political motorcades nervous. Built to smash holes in helicopters, transformers, engine blocks, a mile and a half away if need be. Bipod on it as a gentle hint not to try to fire it like a single-shot .22. Huge scope that made Zoey thankful that her uncle had been a gun nut who had taught her how to use a telescopic sight. Beast of a recoil, though this one had a muzzle brake that made things a little better. Twenty fucking pounds to carry. Even the bullets seemed to weigh a ton. She didn't have many left now. Louis and Francis had been carrying most of the spare ammo. They'd thought she was crazy for insisting on lugging the rifle around with no help from the others, but the damage it did made it worth the pain.

She shook her head, trying to stay awake. Undamaged safe rooms were getting harder and harder to find, but it was safe enough in here, she knew. The doors were sound. It was the dreams she was afraid of, and the things she saw out of the corner of her eye that weren't there when she turned her head to view them full on. They were coming on her more and more. Not even sleep was safe now. She was only safe awake, with the gun loaded, in the sunlight, on open ground. But it had been days now with no sleep, little food, constantly on the move. This was the first safe room she'd seen in a long time that was intact, though even here someone or something had smashed the microphone attached to the radio set. _Just a little pause. Only a little. I will sit and rest for an hour or two and then go on_, she said to herself, and then she was asleep.

Columns and long white halls with cathedral-high ceilings. Paintings hung on all the walls, more than Zoey had ever seen before in one place. Some of them she recognized from books, though it was Claire who was the still-picture specialist in the family. Zoey had always preferred her images to show a bit more life. Movies for her.

She was the responsible one, Elder Sister, with the gravitas of someone who had just turned sixteen, moving methodically along the halls, though always in front of her parents, who tended to dawdle and argue fine points of detail mined from their guidebooks the night before. The Prado was as near deserted as it ever got, the deadest part of the season, late winter in Madrid. Her father's idea of a clever vacation, to save money and "avoid the crowds." _Wasn't Spain supposed to be a hot country? _Zoey thought, and shivered.

Claire, younger and tireless, flitted from painting to painting to Zoey like a moth in a chandelier showroom. She dragged Zoey to her favorites; Zoey dutifully nodded and followed in her sister's wake. Young as she was, this was Claire's home ground. At least her taste was unorthodox; eccentric, even grotesque. She didn't pause for self-satisfied portraits of the rich and powerful of past centuries. _I am pope-pooped, cardinal-crammed, Jesused to the ears; one more saint and I will scream, _Zoey reflected to herself. _Unless he's doing something really interesting. Like burning heretics alive._

As Zoey had feared, their progress stalled in front of Bosch's _Garden of Earthly Delights_, famous and enigmatic, a specialty of the house. Their parents caught up with them, and spent what seemed ages chewing over the details with Claire, while Zoey kept her peace, wondering if it had any potential, any inspiration, for her. She sighed. Probably not. No movie material there. _Hard to keep it credible with all those weird monsters running about, _she thought. _People would be too busy laughing to sense any fear._

The final galleries, and Zoey was drooping. Too many images in too little time; not even an impalement or a flaying alive would perk her up now, she thought gloomily. Then Claire came clattering up again, still with the strength to run after miles of corridors. She was making Zoey feel closer to sixty than to sixteen.

"Zo, you have got to see this one," Claire burst out, and tugged her hand. "It's gross. _Gross_. Gross but fun. You'll see."

"Bruegel painted it," Clair piped up when they arrived before the panel. "Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It's called _The Triumph of Death_."

A sick-yellow plain dotted with smoking ruins, and a smoke-filled pustular sky. In the foreground, human beings and their toys: a king, a courtier, peasants; playing cards, a backgammon board, a table with a white tablecloth, lutes and other musical instruments. Behind them, the armies of Lord Death, advancing unstoppable behind coffin-lid shields, cutting down the few who have the enterprise to offer resistance, playing grim jokes on some others, like the skeleton waving a handful of gold coins under the king's nose or the lovers who fail to notice how bony the hands are that hold the lute that accompanies their song. The army of Death is driving the living, grotesquely outnumbered, into a huge coffin. On top, one of the dead plays them in to the beat of kettledrums, while in the background a body dangles on a gallows and another of the dead raises its sword to cut the head off a man who, perhaps, had tried to slip away from the carnage.

"Death, Ruler of All. Punishing his disloyal subjects," Zoey said, almost a whisper, and recited a scrap of poetry that came into her head unbidden, _He is the despot's despot. All must bide, Late or soon, the message of his might. Princes and potentates their heads must hide, Touched with the awful sigil of his state. _She shook her head. Something about that picture really bothered her.

Whatever it was, it rolled off Claire like water off a duck's back. "Yeah, I know, I know. It's kind of a common topic during that time," she piped up brightly. "But this is the best of them. A lot are pretty crude. Too blunt. This is _funny_." Claire pointed at a detail, almost hopping with excitement. "See there, Death trying to give that woman a hug, and she's running away with a look on her face." She glanced up at Zoey, who continued silent, "You could get ideas for a _really _creepy movie out of this one, couldn't you?"

"Or a reality. Remember, Bruegel saw that... not the army of skeletons, of course... but the burning houses, the executions, the bodies. The march of Death." Zoey shook her head. "You should read up on the history behind it some time, Claire. It's pretty grim."

"I _like _grim," Claire began. She was interrupted by a shout from the other end of the gallery. Their parents were waving. Time to leave.

"Thanks sis," Zoey said. "I won't have any appetite for days. So much for the foreign food adventure."

Claire stuck out her tongue at Zoey. "You said you wanted to lose weight. You should _thank _me." With that, she turned and ran up the gallery to where their parents were waiting, followed by Zoey, who kept up with her sister, for once, and did not look back.

Zoey woke. The stale, dusty air of the safe room. A kettledrum sound, loud and insistent. A rattle like the clash of dried bones. She smelled burning. Fighting a mounting urge to panic, she ran to the exit door. Forced herself to peer out the window. _They would be there. Come for her at last, the last, but over at last. Almost a relief._

But there was nothing out there. None of the detail so vivid from her dream, the detail that Claire had spent the rest of the Spain trip teasing her about. No skeletal army, no gigantic coffin with its opening gaping to swallow her. The images and the smell of burning faded like the phantoms they were. Just a steady rain and wind, beating down on roofs and canvas awnings. The mundane miseries of a damp gray day. An electrical fitting hung from a wire, swinging lackadaisically into the side of a metal drum half full of water, which responded with a surprisingly deep clang, drum-like. Imagination, paranoia, confusion on waking, and the vividness of her dream, had done the rest.

Zoey was still too tired to feel much. She glanced upward. The sky seemed to be clearing, the rain easing off. _I'll wait for it to stop before I go on, _she decided. _No point taking unnecessary risks._

But what was the point anyway, she wondered. Keeping faith with the dead, performing for an audience of ghosts. That was about all there was to it now. Not that they would ever know. Keeping moving, not just sitting down to die. Working toward the open ocean, even though there wasn't much chance of her finding a boat of any size that she could control alone. Hoping the infected would begin to die off. She'd come upon their corpses more and more often in the past few days, dead, but with no sign of external violence. Starved, perhaps, or the infection had at long last broken something vital and taken them down.

Zoey slumped back into the corner and went to sleep again, and this time, to her relief, she did not dream.

**Chapter Two: Naked Shall I Return**

When Zoey woke again, it was early morning. The rain had stopped and the air was fresh, even in the closed-off confines of the safe room. The ambiguous noises from outside had softened and slowed, gone now far beyond any possibility of ominous interpretations. She could even hear birds, now and then: crows calling in the distance, and a sharp twittering from something she didn't recognize closer in. There was an incongruous summer-holiday feeling in the air.

Relaxed for the first time in days, Zoey realized with distaste that she was absolutely filthy. Personal hygiene had never been their top priority, but while the group had been together they had done their best. There had been Bill with his military background to remind them that in a war, getting sick could be just as fatal as getting shot, and besides, keeping yourself clean kept your morale up. Louis had been fastidious to a fault – he took care to keep his head shaved, and hadn't even agreed to discard his tie until one of the infected nearly strangled him with it – and Francis had at least been ingenious in devising ways to heat water and construct showers. Good times.

She stretched and smiled as one particular memory came back to her. There had been a safe room where the builder had installed a shower in one corner, but had neglected to curtain it. Louis and Francis had tried to pile up boxes to provide a screen, without success. Then Bill had taken three chairs and placed them side by side in the opposite corner of the room, and the men had sat themselves down there in a line with their backs to her, competing to see who could fix his gaze in the most obvious opposite to her unclothed body. It had been sweet of them, but she felt a stab of guilt at the end, when Francis made a scramble for the latrine bucket as soon as she sounded the all clear. She'd apologized for not being quicker, and Francis had responded deadpan, "S'okay Zoey darlin', I just tied a knot in it." Perfectly on cue, Louis had opened his eyes wide and exclaimed, "Now, that is _scope _and to _spare_!" and they'd all collapsed with laughter.

That was the best reason of all to keep going, it occurred to her: to bear witness. If she failed now, no one would ever know how brave and kind and resourceful they had been. And that would be too unfair. Of all of what they had been, she was all that remained.

There was no shower in this safe room, unfortunately; not even any water that still ran. But on one of the shelves there was a case of baby wipes and several boxes of other personal hygiene items, pharmacy loot, including disposable razors and an improbable amount of shaving cream. Zoey fished out a tube of toothpaste and a package of tampons, both badly needed, and a box of condoms, Xtra-Large, to keep the barrel of the big rifle from fouling if she slipped and jammed it into the mud. Then she paused and studied the rest. An old temptation had reawakened in her head.

She rummaged through her belongings until she found what she was looking for, a pair of barber's scissors. Then she stripped methodically, dropping her dirty clothes on the table. Naked, she poked through the clothes and thought for a moment. Her old bra and briefs could be discarded, and the socks, since she had replacements in her pack, picked up from the ruins of a high-class ladies' wear store she had gleefully looted, seizing her first and no doubt only chance to get her hands on undergarments that cost more per set than her entire wardrobe had in the past. The jeans, shirt, and jacket would get what cleaning the wipes could give, until she found new ones. Under the circumstances, it was good enough.

Zoey stood for a moment with the scissors in her hand, thinking. Then she raised them to her head and began cutting off her hair as flush to her skull as she could manage. It was almost solid in places, repulsive. Every so often, she paused to scrub the stubble left with a handful of baby wipes. When her head was close-cropped, she did the same for her body hair, trimmed her nails to the quick, and then set the scissors down to cover herself head to toe in shaving cream. A dozen razors and six cans later, and she had transformed into a ghost-pale marble statue, classical, elegant and a touch inhuman, shaving every inch of her body that she could reach, even where there was no apparent hair to remove, and polishing off what was left of the shaving cream with baby wipes. Not even her eyebrows remained.

She studied herself in a small mirror, turning to examine her form from different angles, and nodded in satisfaction. Not a single nick, and all the exercise had left her in terrific shape. Despite the dimness of the safe room, her skin _glittered_. She'd wondered what it would be like to be so sleek and smooth, ever since she had seen Natalie Portman with her head shaved in _V for Vendetta_, but the certain and negative reaction from her friends and family had always deterred her. She nodded again, and smiled. It felt right. She would take nothing with her, nothing at all. _Naked came I into this world, and naked shall I return_, she thought to herself. But unlike poor old god-ridden Job, she could do anything she wanted now. Anything at all.

She picked two or three packages of stolen foundations out of her pack and examined them carefully. Black seemed somehow inappropriate, and the only other color was a dark gray-blue. That would be fine. _Ravage_, the name on the label. A reference to the effect on surrounding males or to the damage to the buyer's wallet? Bra and panties, precisely her size. The price tag read _only _four hundred twenty dollars. She grinned to herself. _Apocalypse fire sale, today and forever only, 100% discount. No rain checks_.

After she got the new bra and panties on, she moved about a bit, exploring her sensations. The set felt good, very good, but not ten times better than the forty dollar combos she'd worn before. _Vanity. All is vanity and vexation of spirit, and zombies and stolen underwear_, she thought, a bit light-headed, and pirouetted across the room. _Naked came I into this world, but with subtle and understated elegance shall I leave it. The Lord taketh and the Lord giveth away, blessed be the name of the Lord._

It was nearly noon before Zoey finally left the safe room. She briefly considered remaining another day, but the skies were clear and full darkness wouldn't come till late. No point in lingering further. There was nothing more for her here. Nothing for her anywhere, perhaps, but hope springs eternal, and so on and so forth.

The exit door to the safe room gave onto a walled yard half-blocked with the junk of decades, seemingly untouched by later events. At the other end of the yard, about fifty meters further on, there was a mesh gate that opened onto a narrow paved road running along the river bank. On the right was the river; on the left, as far as Zoey could see, there was a shoulder-tall chain-link fence and beyond it brush and stunted trees.

There were several more corpses of ordinary infected in the yard, again displaying no obvious indication of how and why they had met their ends. Nearing the exit, curiosity overcame Zoey, and she squatted briefly by one for a closer examination. It had crawled into a corner to die, like a wounded animal, for some reason only it had known trying to force its way between a pair of heavy crates that had resisted its efforts to drag them apart. The wood was covered with bloody handprints. Defeated by the crates, curled up at their foot, it had bitten its hands to the bone in its last agonies, and its face was grotesquely twisted with pain and rage. Its eyes were still wide open, and the sockets were smeared with clotted blood, as if it had been clawing at them as well.

_They've killed my friends, and they're probably going to kill me too. They hate me; they want me dead. What is it to me if they all die in agony? I should be happy. I should be very happy. Why aren't I happy? _Zoey shook her head. Claire had spoiled all that for her. Finding her own sister as a witch, her only desire to die, her only request that Zoey kill her. Which she had done. And didn't regret it. Would never regret it. Regret only that it had come to this: that the best and only thing she could do for her closest relative, the only survivor of her family, was to shoot her six times through the heart at point-blank range with a hunting rifle. What was the difference between Claire and all the rest? this one here? Only that she did not know its name, would never know it. But she could be sure of one thing: it hadn't chosen to be infected any more than Claire had nurtured ambitions to become a witch.

Zoey stood up. _So many to bear witness for_, she thought. _'Tis a load would sink a navy_, and who would take it from her shoulders in the end?

The exit gate was unlocked; the road beyond it stretched empty as far as she could see, the fields to the left and the river to the right likewise deserted, as if the road and fence were natural formations and the region one in which human beings had never yet set foot. The birds had fallen silent. She slipped on the infrared goggles and activated them, scanning the brush. No hot spots; nothing there at all. It was safe to move on.

Later in the afternoon, the handful of sparrows that had ventured to the back door of the safe room in search of crumbs were startled into sudden flight by a loud crackle and hiss. Zoey had been toying with the half-broken radio the previous evening; now, too late, it chose to answer her. Voices, urgent, several men and at least one woman. They talked to themselves and the empty room for a time, and then, as evening came, fell silent again and forever.

**Chapter Three: And Ever More Shall Be So.**

Three days with too little sleep. The countryside was almost deserted, and the ominous silence made Zoey restless and nervous. No matter where she was, no matter how secure, she couldn't close her eyes for more than a few moments.

She had passed two safe rooms along the way, both wrecked. The first had had both doors torn off, and the inside was spattered with blood, but otherwise it was bare and clean. The second had been much worse. Someone had flooded it with gasoline and set it on fire, and nothing was left of its occupants but black lumps like charred logs covered by buzzing flies. Zoey was puzzled: the burned cadavers were laid out neatly, not frozen in the grotesque forms of people trying to claw their way out of a fiery deathtrap. _Dead when they burned_, Zoey thought. _Dead or drugged. _But why?

Probably someone had felt the same way about these dead that she had felt about Claire, and had done the same thing – burned the remains of his relatives, friends, family, whoever the dead had been. Maybe some of them had turned. Fire purifies. A pity he hadn't used enough gasoline and left a mess. The safe room had been built of concrete; it couldn't catch fire and add its heat to the flames, the way her uncle's wooden house had served as Claire's funeral pyre. She walked on. Fifty yards ahead, there was a large oak tree growing near the road, the corpse of a man who had hanged himself dangling from one of its branches. Underneath the body were two empty gasoline cans.

The road went on. Zoey followed it, more and more mechanically, as weariness and a sense of futility grew on her. Bill had laid out a path for them, down the river, but Louis had been carrying the maps. A vague picture remained with her: this road, then a tunnel, a town, then a bridge to a marina. Boats. Or the possibility of boats. Bill had insisted on a sailboat, since they could never be sure of a supply of fuel. Could she handle a sailboat herself? Maybe. She had a bit of experience. Handle it until she fell asleep, anyway.

She tried not to think. One foot in front of another, up the path that she remembered Bill tracing. Scanning the road ahead with the infrared goggles. Once or twice a day, killing an infected who got too close. But the infected had abandoned her for the most part. Every day, the skies were clear, the sun unnaturally bright to her weakened eyes. Nothing moved in the fields and bush. No birds but ominous flocks of crows that always seemed to be circling in the distance. Nearly all the cadavers she came across were weeks old, skeletal. The road shimmered and danced in the rays of the sun, making her dizzy. She began to talk to herself to keep her spirits up, reassuring Bill and Louis and Francis that she would go on, wouldn't give up. That it would all mean something in the end. Every day she believed it a little less.

Sometimes, especially in the first couple of days, before she was too tired, she was gripped by anger. It was all so stupid. _Only a few more days_, she thought. _Only a few more days and we would have been safe_. She'd seen only one special along the road, and it had been dead. A spitter, its mouth horribly corroded by its own acid bile, jaw dangling and useless. _They're burning out. If we'd waited just one more day. Even one_. After Bill had died, she'd been the one who had insisted on moving on as fast as they could go. The memory made her guilty, and the guilt made her still angrier. With herself. The others would have gone slower if she hadn't pushed them. Francis had always been cool to the boat idea, and Louis had been neutral. But they'd gone along with her when she said they should keep to Bill's plan. She hadn't even waited for Louis' leg to heal completely. _I was wrong and I killed them_, she thought dully to herself, over and over. _I was stupid and now I'm alone. I deserve this. I deserve all of it_.

On the evening of the fourth day, Zoey reached the tunnel. The road she had been following had curved inland, away from the river. It ended near the tunnel, merging with the highway that ran through it. There was supposed to be a safe room, a converted maintenance area, the entrance just inside the mouth of the tunnel. She could see the wire from its radio strung roughly up the slope above the tunnel mouth, to a jury-rigged antenna near the top of the ridge.

The tunnel was another graveyard, but by this time Zoey regarded all such scenes with indifference. She was long past caring about the deaths of people she hadn't known. It had been four-laned, with a wall separating the two right and two left lanes. The left lanes were clogged with wrecked vehicles; there must have been an accident at the front and the cars behind had collided one with another to form an impenetrable metallic logjam. At least most of them were empty. The right lanes were worse: there the cars had not only piled up but also caught fire, with their passengers trapped inside. It had been weeks now, and the birds and animals had had their way with this unexpected meal: most of the remains were skeletal, picked clean, skulls staring at the sky and bony arms reaching out frail and hopeless from burned metal that had already begun to rust.

The wrecks had come within a few inches of jamming up the safe room door. Zoey had to tug it open, snapping off one burnt arm in the process, still straining to reach a door that would remain forever closed to it. But perhaps because access had been all but blocked, the contents of the safe room were undisturbed. Lanterns, medical supplies, weapons, ammo, food, even a few clothes – and a radio, apparently intact. Lighting a lantern and dropping her gear on the floor, she drew up a chair, sat down, and began examining the set. It was, thank goodness, undamaged, working... but for some reason the batteries had very little power left. She got up and searched the safe room, but there were no spares. She sat back down, and a sense of defeat overcame her again. Always something. _Why didn't I bring along the batteries from the broken set in the last intact safe room? _But she knew the answer to that at once; she hadn't known she'd need them, and they were heavy. _Many hands make light work_, she thought. _But we're down to__the last pair now. Mine. Should have left the big rifle behind. Didn't need it. Should have brought the batteries. So many decisions. I can't do this any more_.

With an effort of will, Zoey managed to focus once again on the present and its possibilities. The batteries were already very close to redlining, and she knew from experience that the radio drained them with alarming speed. She's have a few minutes, no more. On the other hand, it broadcast on a fixed and well-known frequency, and if any organized government or military were out there, they were certain to be monitoring that frequency continuously. She's be heard. What did she want to say?

There were several packages of paper and a number of pencils on the table that held the radio. _Most important speech of my life_, Zoey thought. _Better write a draft, practice. One chance only_. She pulled out some paper and reached for a pencil. Damn! None of the pencils were sharpened, and of course, there was no sharpener in sight. She mechanically pulled a knife from her pack and whittled the end of the pencil, breaking the lead several times until she managed to craft a useable point. The thick lead would make her handwriting look like a child's. _Back to grade school_, she thought, setting the knife and pencil down on the table top, her mind beginning to wander again. _Alphabets and printing. A birthday card from Claire, so proud that she'd learned to write, "Love you foever." _Suddenly overcome by misery, she covered her face, slumped down on the table, and began to cry. _Yes, Claire, foever and ever and ever. I shot you six times, I set fire to you, but I still love you foever._

She must have dozed off as she cried, because when she came to herself again the little light that had filtered through the bars of the safe room entrance door had faded to darkness. She decided to write down what she wanted to say, and then sleep on it. No way to tell if the radios were monitored all night in any case. It would be best to transmit during normal working hours.

After she had finished writing and given the draft an initial revision, Zoey put down her pencil. _I'll read it again after I've slept. Probably full of nonsense now_, she thought, and looked around again. Compared to some of her earlier accommodations, this safe room was positively luxurious: real beds (well, army cots) and a couple of taps yielding running water (even though the taps were prominently labeled DO NOT DRINK – probably fed from a tank storing runoff). She ran her hands over her head and thought that she needed another shave. She was getting itchy. Plus her clothes were filthy again. Time to say goodbye to her first set of elegant foundations and break open another package. It looked as if there might be something on the shelves to replace her jeans and shirt as well.

She stood up. Dizzy. The new clothes could wait till tomorrow. She limped over to the sink, stripped, and washed herself. Then she collapsed into the nearest bunk without bothering to dress, wrapping herself in a blanket. Drifting off to sleep, she had a brief flash of panic at sleeping unclothed. _But it's not as if anyone's going to come here_, she said to herself. _I am alone; utterly and always and forever alone, "one is one and all alone and ever more will be so." _She hummed a bit of the ancient melody to herself, "Green grow the rushes, oh," and then she was asleep.

She had been wrong. She was always wrong, Zoey reflected. All of them were here, and her wearing nothing but a sheet. It didn't matter. They were all such gentlemen.

But weren't they dead?

They didn't look dead. _I am always wrong, and I was wrong again. Hooray for being wrong_. She was giddy with happiness. They were all together again. _There are people who care about me._

The room was brightly lit, and they were discussing the road ahead. Zoey listened. Francis was complaining about the search for a boat again, and Bill was knocking down his objections one by one. But it was all done in good spirits, no one was angry or upset, just talk between friends. She felt warm and safe. They weren't dead after all. It must have been just a bad dream.

Louis glanced at his watch and got up, stretching. "We'd better get going," he said. "There's not much time now, and we're already late." The other two got up as well. Zoey tried to rise, but she couldn't move. What was wrong? She became annoyed. They'd forgive her wearing a sheet, Louis would make some joke about a Roman toga probably, but she couldn't slow them down.

"I'll take point," Francis said. "I hate delays." He walked forward, toward the wall... and through it. Then Louis followed him, right through the wall. _Oh god, no... _Zoey tried to scream, but she could no more make a sound than she could move. She was frozen, mute.

Bill walked in the same direction the other two had gone. But he stopped and turned just before the wall, and addressed Zoey directly. He sounded annoyed, "Get a move on, Zoey! We can't slow down now. We've got a long way to go yet. You've got to keep up with us." Then he turned again and walked ahead, through the wall as if it were not there, and disappeared. She tried to scream, _I can't move! I want to keep up but I can't move!_, but nothing came out. She tried again and again, choking and stifling in the hold of whatever had her.

The room went dark. She screamed.

It was the safe room and she was in bed. Her dirty clothes lay in a pile on the floor, barely visible in the light from the turned-down lantern. Half blind with panic, she jumped up and ran to the place in the wall that Bill and Louis and Francis had passed through. It was just wall. Concrete. No secret door. Nothing. She pounded on it with her fists until they hurt, and then sank down to the floor, sobbing and coughing, choking on her tears.

_Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream_, she muttered to herself. No one had been here. Nothing had happened. Only inside her head. They weren't here. They had never been here. _Why do I feel so abandoned? It was just a dream._

And then, _I've fallen behind. I have to catch up. _She shuddered, remembering a bad old joke she'd read about that went the rounds after John Lennon had been shot, "What do you need for a Beatles reunion? Three more bullets."

Their foursome only needed one. And she was falling behind. Bill had said so.

She stumbled back to bed, tunneled blindly into the blankets, and once again cried herself to sleep.

**Chapter Four: The Noonday Demon.**

When Zoey woke again, she was no longer tired. But she was utterly drained, flaccid and helpless. Even to move her head took an enormous effort. She lay there quietly, unplugged, letting the time pass from morning to afternoon to near evening, watching the light from the door move across the ceiling, feeling the air on her bare skin. She wasn't depressed, exactly. Just disconnected from her body and everything else in the outside world, devoid of any sense of urgency, submerged in a vast indifference.

She might have drifted for the entire day if her body had not taken a hand and prodded her into action with the mundane demands of a full bladder. But even after she had been forced out of bed, the inertia persisted. Nature's call answered, still unclothed and uncaring, she wandered into the center of the room and looked around. What needed to be done? Yes. Finish cleaning herself up and put on new clothes. And there was that radio message. But it didn't seem that urgent now. Probably too late to transmit today anyway. Tomorrow would be early enough.

She pulled a chair over to beside the sink and began to clean and shave herself, meticulous, but still as if submerged in some clear thick liquid that clung to her limbs and slowed their movements. It began to annoy her a bit. Why was everything such an effort? _At least you're doing something_, she thought. _Slow and steady wins the race_. But she didn't even believe that herself.

There had been enough on the shelves to allow Zoey to discard all her soiled clothes. Now, on top of her treasure trove of liberated underthings, she wore a new pair of jeans and a shirt and jacket. The shirt was a man's, white, too large, but with a top button or two undone and a black lace bra under it, for a passing moment it made her feel stylish and a bit naughty. She smiled and gave herself a little self-congratulatory hug. The jacket was red, with white piping, a virtual match for her old one. Now the jeans. At least they were women's. They should have been too small, but to her surprise, they fit perfectly. _Two sizes down, and I wasn't exactly fat before_, she reflected. _I have to make sure to eat_. She found she couldn't remember the last time she had eaten. But she wasn't hungry anyway. Food could come later.

What next? She sat down at the radio table and tried to read her notes over, and at once became cold with fear, the first real emotion she had felt all day. She couldn't read the notes. She couldn't get to the end of a sentence without her eyes veering off along some side path. Even the letters seemed confused. The words she had written a day ago danced in front of her eyes like the surface of the road danced for her when the sunlight shone down on it too brightly. Her mind was on strike, and her senses were honoring the picket line. _Guess I need more sleep_, she thought, but that thought only compounded her fear. She knew that when she slept, the dreams would be waiting for her.

_And food_, she remembered. It was a memory more than an urge. But she couldn't go on forever without eating. She got up and walked over to the shelves, surveying their contents with a steadily rising disdain. _They must have bought bulk and got this stuff cheap. _There was nothing there but cans of pork and beans, the only break in the monotony the occasional can of beans _sans _pork, for the convenience of any Jew or Muslim who had the misfortune to be stranded here, she supposed. She picked up a can of beans and examined the label carefully. Kosher **and **_halal_. Very thorough. Now if they had thought to include more than one variety of food...

Drinks were limited in variety as well, only bottled water, but that she could live with. Some water would have to do for dinner. It wasn't as if she was burning a lot of energy. There was a bottle of pills as well, on an upper shelf; this she automatically pocketed. Then she walked over to her bed, sat down, and tried once more to think.

The most important thing was to pin down what was wrong with her. She'd sensed it creeping up on her for a long time, ever since Louis and Francis had been killed. It would be easier to manage if she could put a name on it. _Think, Zoey. You signed up for psychology classes. You even attended them and passed the finals. What do you call a depression that doesn't leave you feeling depressed, only empty?_

She frowned. There _was _a proper word for it. She'd written a paper on it, even gotten an A, and now she couldn't remember.

Ah, there it was. _Acedia_. The Noonday Demon of the early desert monks. That had been the title of her paper, the Noonday Demon. The failure of all connection with the world and its duties, not even caring about not caring. One of the eight precursors to sin in early Christian theology, which uncontrolled led to the deadly sin of sloth, the failure to use one's God-given talents appropriately. She had taken the concept and developed it independently of the religious tradition, she remembered, talking about its similarities and differences with secular concepts such as apathy, depression, shell shock, combat fatigue, and nihilism. So. She was sitting in the middle of her own research topic. The irony failed to amuse her.

It had been an undergraduate paper, descriptive only. She hadn't gotten into the ways of treating the condition. Given her circumstances now, that seemed an unfortunate omission.

Willpower, focus...they'd be a part of it for sure, Zoey thought. Maybe medications as well. _Speaking of which, what were these pills I just picked up? _She fished the bottle out of her pocket and tried to examine it, not very successfully. The words still wouldn't come together for her. The label read dexa-something. The instructions spoke of preventing drowsiness, and said the drug was not to be used by pregnant women or breast-feeding mothers. _No trouble qualifying there_, she muttered to herself. As for the rest, she couldn't read it very clearly, but they certainly weren't talking about poison. Probably a stimulant of some kind. Caffeine pills? She'd taken them before.

Bill had always warned them to read the labels carefully before taking any pills. Francis too; he'd had friends who had died or crashed their bikes because of one too many chemical experiments. _I'd better start slow. _The best way to find out what this stuff did would be to pop one or two capsules and await developments. Then she'd either throw the bottle out or use it to give her that last little edge she might need while escaping.

Nick studied himself in a mirror on the bulkhead of his cabin and brushed a few specks of imaginary dust off his lapels. Life on the nuclear aircraft carrier _U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln _was going very well indeed, far better than he would have been willing to give odds for when the four of them had been in the safe room nerving themselves up for the mad dash across that now-destroyed bridge back in New Orleans. Military uniform wasn't anywhere near as snappy as his mortally wounded white suit, but it was free and they _liked _it to be kept sharp. It also lent the wearer a certain air of authority. Nick was already catching himself wondering, now and then, how that air of authority might be put to profitable use. Just as an abstract mental exercise, of course.

On paper, all four of them were Special Forces lieutenants, but no one on the ship below the captain could give them an order that they _had _to obey, and the captain only in the name of the Secretary of Defense. They were a group apart. None of them had taken undue advantage of the leeway that this gave them – out of respect, and in Nick's case, a prudent desire to avoid fouling his own nest – but some of the enlisted personnel they dealt with definitely resented it.

A clock began to beep out 0900. Time for the daily situation conference. With one last adjustment, Nick turned his back on the mirror and hurried off to the conference room.

When he got there, the other three were already seated around the table. Rochelle looked up at him, "Hi, Nick. They'll be a few moments. Sorting out something that came in just now, they said."

Ellis was in full fret mode, more or less his emotional default since they'd received word that Zoey might be alive and in the area. "Ah still think it would be better if they let us do the listening. Ah'm not sure they pay attention to it _all _the time."

"Ellis, relax," Coach said. "Of course they do. Don't even know whether it was a person last time. It could have been a raccoon, and all our talk and noise just scared it off again."

A brief silence. Then Nick spoke up. "I don't know about you others," he began, "but I'm beginning to get really annoyed with the way some of the people on this ship look at us out of the corners of their eyes. They figure we've skipped to the head of the line and been made Special Forces and super-lieutenants just because of something we were born with. That we're free-riding on our immune status. I don't like it."

"You'll get used to it, Nick," Rochelle said, in a dry tone. With a faint smile on her face, she continued. "Sounds just like what I had to go through whenever I got a promotion at the studio. A lot of my co-workers would write it off to my race or my sex, or the two of them together. Didn't ever cross their tiny minds that I might have earned it, even when I could do things they couldn't. Welcome to the world of the minority professional."

Coach roared with laughter; even Ellis had trouble hiding a smile. Nick stood by his chair for a moment, annoyed, his face carefully impassive. Then footsteps approached, and he sat down quickly. "Let's all see what the waiter is serving today," Coach said. "No tellin' where we could be by dinnertime."

"Ah told you! Ah _told _you!"

Ellis' fretting had been exchanged for intense excitement. Not that the others weren't excited too by the news, but he was going off like the Fourth of July at a fireworks factory. Nick sighed loudly; Rochelle looked daggers at him, but Ellis was in no condition to notice.

"We got a job to do first, Ellis," Coach said, trying to bring him down a bit. "We got to survive that one before we can go after this new lead. Besides, we don't even know where to go if we went right now."

They were alone again in the briefing room, digesting the news that they'd just received. The first part of the briefing had gone much as usual. Another routine job, to begin this afternoon. They were going to be helicoptered in to a stranded tanker that was still occupied by the infected – probably members of the crew. They would kill the infected, sterilize the tanker, and stand watch while a Navy crew pumped the tanker dry of its cargo. It was aviation gasoline, worth its weight in gold now. It would be a long time before any refineries were up and running again, and in the meantime, the helicopters had to keep flying.

That wasn't what had excited Ellis. It was what they'd said afterward. A radio signal received in the early morning, and recorded. A woman's voice trying to speak too fast, garbling the words as the strength of the signal steadily declined. But enough had come through to confirm that Zoey was on the other end of the line and that her destination was Robbins Bay Marina. As his contingency plan dictated, the radio operator had told Zoey to try to make for the nearest landmark that they would, or could, visit on this trip: the Stevens Point relay station, located less than a mile from Robbins Bay. By that time, however, the signal had been fading fast, and it wasn't clear whether Zoey had received the message.

"Ah told you! We ought to go out there _right _away and get her."

Nick rolled his eyes. "Ellis, I can understand where you're coming from, but she forgot to tell us where she _is _right now. And they didn't have much chance to get a fix on the location of the signal. You heard the man. Best guess puts her about twenty-five miles from the marina. More or less."

Rochelle continued for him, "Three or four days' walk at least if you have to work your way around obstacles. The river's in the way, you know. If we went there right away, Ellis, it wouldn't do any good. The work we have to do at Stevens Point isn't going to take longer than a day or two. We'd just have to leave before she had a chance to get there."

Ellis clenched his fists in frustration. "Ah know. Ah know. But it's hard to wait knowin' she's out there. I wish we could go right _now_."

"Always hard to wait for good things," Coach said. "If we give her a week to get there, like the man said, she'll probably be out to greet the helicopter when we arrive." He smiled reassuringly at Ellis. "You'll see."

"And in the meantime," Nick concluded. "We have a job to do and some infected to settle scores with. We leave for that tanker at 1400 hours." He stood up. "Better start getting ready. We don't want to risk any accidents, especially now."

The others rose from their seats and began making their way back to their cabins. As he was leaving the room, Ellis stopped, made a grand gesture in the general direction of the mainland and said in a loud voice, "I'm comin' for you, Zoey! You just hang on and wait!"

**Chapter Five: A Candle for Zoey**

Zoey felt wonderful. Sometimes she would dance a little bit along the road instead of walking. Everything was going so well, and her journey would come to an end soon.

The road was bright in the sunshine. It didn't move around the way it had before; it was solid and reliable. She knew exactly where she was going. Sometimes she saw the infected in the distance, but they no longer troubled her. She minded her business, and they minded theirs. _The way it always should have been, _she thought.

After broadcasting her message and leaving the safe room, Zoey had taken more pills, she didn't remember how many. Without them, she couldn't move at all. Then she had passed through the town Bill had told her about. It was made of houses that all looked alike, all painted the same color. _What a nuisance, _she thought. She kept on getting mixed up and losing her way. Sometimes, when she didn't concentrate enough on remembering what she was supposed to be doing, she would find herself wandering into the houses and looking them over, sitting on couches, examining pictures on the walls, looking for food. _Some people have terrible taste in art, _she reflected. _I'm glad Claire isn't here to see this. _She found a lot of food; it was reassuring. But she couldn't remember if she had eaten any of it. Probably not. She really shouldn't. It would be stealing. Besides, she never seemed to be hungry any more.

She didn't seem to need to sleep either. It was strange. She hadn't remembered caffeine pills having _this _strong an effect. But thank goodness they had, because now she could walk by day and by night too. And if she didn't sleep, there was no way the dreams could come upon her again. _I'll rest after I meet up with my rescuers, _she thought. One of the ones she had met before had been a boy about her age. He'd been kind of cute but he'd gone all stupid when she'd spoken to him from the bridge. Sensitive nerves, she supposed. She wondered if he would be in the rescue party. _If he is, _Zoey thought, _I must try to creep up behind him and say Boo! He'll scream. I just __**know **__he'll scream._

Sometimes she still found herself falling into that blank mood where she didn't care about anything and just sat down and looked at the clouds and the birds flying by. But the pills were good here, too. She took one or two whenever the mood came on her. It didn't make the mood go away but it gave her strength to fight it and move on and remember where she was going and why she was here. She took them when she felt sleepy as well. _Too many? But I'll quit taking them in less than a week, when I get to my destination, _she thought. _What can happen in a week? _She just hoped there would be enough pills to last to the end of the journey.

Now the town was past, and the bridge. The bridge had scared her. It had been broken and she'd nearly fallen off, but a smoker had caught her and put her down in a safe place. She had shaken hands with it afterward, and thanked it, and it had waved its hand as if to say, You're welcome. _I never liked killing things, _she thought. _I hated it. I'm so glad I don't need to any more._

Now it was only a few miles to her destination, the place the voice on the radio had told her about. She could see the towers at the top of a rise. That was where she would be rescued at last, and they would take her home. But she had moved along so fast, walking by night and day, that she'd probably have to wait for her rescuers to arrive. She giggled at the thought. _I was always late for things before. Truly this is a new heaven and earth, if I am early to an appointment._

On her way to the towers, just as evening was coming, she passed a building by the side of the road. She had passed many buildings large and small, but this one caught her eye because of the high wall around it and its towers. It seemed to be some sort of cathedral. _I didn't know they had churches like this in America, _Zoey thought. _It looks just like something in Europe. Claire would have loved it._

The front door was huge and wooden and dark. The tower rose above it, so high. But it was strange, she didn't feel the slightest bit nervous. If anything, she felt at home. She opened the door, went through it, and immediately turned to tug it shut again. Then she turned again to face the interior, and gasped with awe.

Big as it had seemed to be outside, the cathedral seemed to be even bigger when seen from the inside. It stretched on as far as she could see. But it wasn't its size that had stunned her. It was the candles. The entire hall was filled with burning candles; Zoey couldn't even guess how many. There were big candles and small ones; some brightly flamed, some were flickering out. She stood there with her mouth open. Then she remembered: she had seen this place before. It had been in a film, and the candles had had a keeper, who had looked very severe but had been a kind old man really. She couldn't remember much more, but she did know that the keeper of the candles was not a bad person, even though everybody seemed to fear him.

A voice spoke from her left. "I don't have many visitors, but you are welcome," it said. She turned and saw him. The keeper of the candles. He was just like he had been in the movie, wearing a funny sort of cloak with another little cloak over his shoulders, with a broad-brimmed hat on his head and carrying a long staff, a sort of walking stick. "Most people are too timid to come here of their own accord. It's a pity," the keeper said.

Zoey smiled. She knew he was a friend. "Are you a priest?" she said.

"I serve, yes, but not in the priesthood," the keeper replied. They had walked toward each other, and were now face to face, surrounded by a forest of candles. She noticed his gaze shift to one of them as it flickered out. He sighed. "The post is a difficult one sometimes," he said slowly, and a bit sadly, Zoey thought. "It's good to have a visitor. But what brings you here?"

"I was going to my destination, and passed this place, and it will be dark soon," Zoey said. A sudden thought came to her. "May I borrow one of your candles and a lamp to hold it? The road will soon be dark, and I have never come this way before."

The keeper didn't answer at once. Instead he walked further into the cathedral. He seemed to be looking for something. Soon, he bent down and took one of the candles, a short one, but it was burning very brightly and steadily. He went to a cupboard on the wall, and took out an old-fashioned glass lantern, into which he put the candle. Then he returned to Zoey.

"Here. I hope this one will do."

"And I hope I haven't spoiled anything by borrowing it."

The keeper shook his head, "No. It's yours in any case. I'm bending the rules a little bit by letting you take it with you, but no harm will come of it, I'm sure." He smiled. "If they don't like it, they can always fire me. I wouldn't object."

They talked for a little longer, before it was time for her to leave. She couldn't remember the details of what they had discussed after she left. She only remembered that he was tired of his job and wished that he could leave it, but he couldn't. It was necessary, and someone had to do it. "Duty," he had said, and left it at that. Zoey understood perfectly and told him that she admired him.

It was dark by the time Zoey left the cathedral. She walked along the road in a pool of yellow light from the lantern. She had left the big rifle behind on a table in the cathedral. The rifle was no longer necessary, but she had still stopped to thank it before she left. _To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven_, she thought. She would not be ungrateful because times had changed.

She passed some of the infected along the road. None of them tried to hurt her. That time was past as well. On a small bridge over a stream, she met a witch. The witch wasn't crying any longer. "Has the pain gone now?" she had asked it, and it had nodded and smiled to her. There would be no pain any longer, none at all.

But it was dark, she thought, and she needed to find an inn. Not because she feared the outside or the dark, but because she was at the end of her day's travel and it was proper to stay in an inn.

Here was an inn, along this lane, a little bit off the road. It was a busy place. It hummed and crackled. She found a door and opened it. It opened onto a small room with another door at the end, a door with a little hatch in it. This was the right place, Zoey was sure.

She knocked on the inner door and the hatch opened. There was a old lady there on the other side of the door, a chubby smiling old lady out of a fable, with red cheeks and bright eyes, wearing a bonnet and an apron. Behind her, Zoey could see a fireplace and a big crackling fire. She smelled cooking, stew and chicken and apple pie most of all. Cinnamon and apples. Yes, it was the right place.

"Oh!" the old lady said. "You're early, you know. It's terribly rude of me, I know, but can you wait out there until I finish the preparations? I promise you that it won't be long, and when I'm ready, all your friends will be here too. They meant to give you a surprise party, but you've come so early. Be a dear, and hide until after they get here, or they'll be disappointed. You can stay there. Don't worry, they'll come in the other door."

That was reasonable, she thought. She would pretend to be surprised, and all of her friends would be happy.

Zoey sat down on the ground, in front of the second door. She noticed that she had no pills left, but that didn't matter. Their time had passed as well. _To every thing, there is a season. _Without them, she felt even better than before. _I had just enough to get me here_, she thought. _Everything is so right now. Everything has happened as it should, and everything will be as it should_ _be now, forever and ever. _Soon she would see her friends, and she would be happy. Nothing bad would ever happen again. Not to her, not to anyone.

The old lady had said she would be ready soon, and that all Zoey's friends would come. Everyone would be there. It would be the grandest party ever, and after it was over she would go to her room and go to sleep in a big bed with white sheets and a red quilt, and huge fluffy pillows. She would be wearing a silk nightgown that cost a thousand dollars, and this time she'd pay for it honestly, not steal it. That still troubled her a bit, even though she was sure she had been forgiven.

She wondered if Bill and Louis and Francis and Claire would make it to the party tonight. _Why not? _she thought. _There is nothing bad any more. I was having a nightmare and now I am awake. I love them so much, they are sure to come. _She would introduce Claire to Louis, and maybe they would fall for each other and get married. She giggled at the thought. That would really cause her old bigot of a father to burst a vein. But perhaps he had changed as well? Yes, she decided, he must have changed as well. He would welcome Claire back into the family and respect Louis, and in due time he would go all stupid over their babies, as has been the accepted practice of grandparents from time immemorial. _All the bad things have gone away and we are beautiful again. This is what we always were. We have taken back our true faces. _She smiled. _Claire knew this would happen, _she thought. _She always believed in happy endings. I must remember to tell her that she is much wiser than I am._

The floor Zoey was sitting on was warm. It even seemed to be soft, though that was impossible, wasn't it? It might be a while before the old lady on the other side of the door was ready, and all her friends came to meet her. She could doze off right here. They'd wake her in time. _There are people who care about me, _she thought sleepily. _So many people care about me now._

She curled up on the floor with the lantern she had been given in front of her. It was beginning to flicker a bit. "You lit my way all through the dark," she whispered to it softly. "But now you're tired. I know. I don't mind. You can sleep too." She reached into her pocket and took out the empty bottle of pills and put it near the lantern. Then she took her pistol off her belt and laid it on the floor by the other side of the lantern. She whispered to them as well, "Thank you, Pistol. Thank you, Pills. I don't need you any more, but I will never forget you. You never let me down, and I love you too."

The candle flame was sinking. _Such a clever candle, _she thought. _It knows I want to sleep now. And he said it was mine, too. I could not have a better candle._

Now it was nearly out and the small room had become dark. _I can sleep now. For a little bit, until my friends are here. I won't dream, not at all. _She felt warm and safe, the way she had felt when her mother had tucked her in at night, when she was a little girl. _Nothing bad will ever happen again, _she thought, on the edge of sleep. _Because there are people who care about me. So many people. _She had never imagined that she could be so happy.

As the candle flame flickered out, she fell asleep, a smile on her face.

**Chapter Six: The Hand We're Dealt**

Rochelle tapped the side of the radio impatiently. She looked up at the other three.

"Ellis, could you be a dear and go check the antenna connection up in the tower again? My signal keeps breaking up. Maybe there's a loose wire."

Coach rose slowly and looked toward Ellis, who was slumped in silent misery. "C'mon Ellis, I'll get your back. No point just sittin' here moping. We'll lose the light if we don't get a move on." Ellis nodded mechanically and silently followed Coach across the roof and down the ladder.

They'd been at the Stevens Point signal relay station for two days now, carrying out a variety of emergency repairs. It hadn't been shut down properly when the infection swept through the area, and had taken some damage, as well as losing power. Now, if it were needed, it could be put back into partial operation, running on electricity they had diverted from a nearby wind turbine, to become another piece in the military's jigsaw puzzle of communication, command, and control.

They'd also been looking for Zoey. Stevens Point was where the military had told her to go, so that they could accomplish rescue and repair in a single mission. It was near to Robbins Bay Marina, and with its cluster of transmission towers, it had the advantage of being visible for miles around. While Rochelle and Coach had been checking wiring diagrams and replacing fuses, Nick and Ellis had been scouring the surrounding area for any signs of life.

They'd even found a truck that still ran, and all four of them had driven down to Robbins Bay yesterday afternoon, in case Zoey hadn't gotten the message. They'd found nothing anywhere, and Ellis seemed close to a nervous collapse.

Rochelle and Nick sat in their rooftop perch near the helicopter pad and watched the two others move slowly over the concrete apron and begin to climb the transmission tower, checking the line at every step. Then Nick leaned back in his chair and looked up into the sky. He said, to no one in particular, "There's nothing _really _wrong with the radio, is there?"

Rochelle took off her headset and looked at Nick. "No, there isn't. I wanted Ellis out of earshot for a little while." She paused for a moment, then said in the flat tones of someone delivering an accepted truth, "You know something that the rest of us don't. About Zoey." It was a statement, not a question.

Nick sat up with a start. "What makes you think _that_?" he demanded, but with a shade less conviction in his voice than would have been necessary to be completely convincing.

"For one thing, you're being _way _too nice to Ellis. Yesterday especially. He's been too frantic to notice, but it sticks out like a sore thumb."

Nick grimaced. "Remind me never to play poker with you," he said, temporarily humbled by his unexpected transparency. He looked at the ground, then at Ellis and Coach climbing the stairs of the tower, then at the sun setting on the western horizon. Anywhere but at Rochelle. Finally he spoke, his eyes on the sunset, quietly, almost reluctantly.

"She's dead."

Rochelle dropped her gaze. She was surprised by how little of a surprise it was. "How do you know?"

"I found her body yesterday morning. Over by that transformer enclosure, couple of hundred yards east of here. No wounds that I could see, but she was nothing but skin and bone. She'd shaved her head too. Probably been dead a couple of days. We were too late."

"Are you sure it was her?"

"I found the draft of her radio message in her pocket. And a couple of other notes. I'm sure." Nick paused, then went on, "She was huddled up in an electrical closet. There was a padlock hanging from the door, so I closed the door and locked her body inside before Ellis could see it."

"He doesn't suspect anything?"

Nick shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Why?"

Nick snorted. "Why did I do it? Rochelle, you _know _what's going to happen if Ellis finds out for sure that Zoey's dead. He'll be out of action for days, maybe weeks. It won't do Zoey any good either. She'll be just as dead. Leave it like this, nothing certain, and he'll end up imagining her still alive, the way he does with Keith."

There was a pause. Then Rochelle said quietly, "Ellis knows that Keith is dead."

Nick raised his eyebrows. "Could have fooled me. When did you learn that?"

"He told me right after we first met. He said he was playing a game with himself. That he _had _to think of Keith as still alive, even though he knew better. Otherwise all this would be too much to bear." Rochelle paused for a moment. "And now he's probably convinced himself that Keith _is _alive after all. Just around the next corner, at the end of the next road. He has hope. It keeps him going."

Nick shook his head. "Hope! In my old business, that was the name of the pump you used to empty a sucker's pocket."

"Still. Hope. The last of the gifts in Pandora's box, the one that stayed behind. The Greeks were never able to decide whether it was a blessing or a curse. Things haven't changed much." Rochelle glanced towards the tower. "They're coming back. We'd better stop talking. And Nick..."

"Yes?"

"Thanks for keeping this quiet. I think you did the right thing." Rochelle smiled at Nick, a slightly over-sweet smile seasoned with a dash of _schadenfreude_, as he grunted and looked away awkwardly. She knew very well that he wasn't used to being complimented on his tact, especially by her, and she couldn't resist teasing him a bit. It was good for his soul.

They could hear the other two climbing the ladder to the roof. "Is it any better now?" Ellis asked Rochelle. Rochelle picked up her earphones and listened for a moment. "Clear as a bell, Ellis. Thank you very much."

"You're very welcome, ma'am." Ellis seemed a shade more cheerful for the exercise.

"One other thing," Rochelle continued. "Signals intelligence has picked up some transmissions from a good deal north of here. They aren't sure yet whether they were an attempt to get a message through, but it's possible." She turned in Nick's direction and winked, and Nick realized that this piece of news owed more to Rochelle's creativity than any news she might have just received on the radio. Despite himself, he was impressed.

Coach gave Ellis a gentle poke on the shoulder. "Y'see, boy? Doesn't ever make sense to give up. Zoey might have had to go north for some reason. We ain't sure she was even comin' here. They sent the message, but we don't know if she ever got it."

Ellis turned to Rochelle. "Ah don't suppose we can go north ourselves and take a look, can we? Ah've got a feeling it's her this time. _Has _to be."

Rochelle sighed. "Ellis, you know they aren't going to approve a shot in the dark rescue mission. Not with the aviation fuel shortage. Besides, there's too much else going on and we're the only team they have that can operate freely in infected areas. We'll just have to hope that she finds a place that has a working radio with a strong signal. They'll send us in if they know for sure. But not before."

"Sometimes, Ellis, you just got to have faith," Coach said. "Zoey'll get out somehow. She doesn't look the type to quit. And a lot of the infected seem to be dying off now."

"Much as it goes against the grain for me to agree with Coach when he's in preacher mode," Nick said carefully, "I think he's right this time. We'll see Zoey again one day. Maybe not soon, but we'll find her. You just have to keep your spirits up. Don't imagine disasters that haven't happened. That doesn't do Zoey or you any good at all."

Ellis looked at Nick. "Hundred per cent chance?"

Nick nodded solemnly. "About that. More or less. But you won't improve it by worrying."

Rochelle, who had gone back to the radio, broke in: "Extraction team will be here at 0900 hours, guys. Ellis, you look exhausted. You've been thinking too much. Nick and I will take the first watch. Ellis, Coach, you two get some sleep now."

Rochelle waited a long time, until hours after both Coach and Ellis were safely asleep, before she raised the topic of Zoey again. It wasn't hard to tell if they were asleep, even from a distance. Both of them snored. Loudly. She'd cursed them for it before, but now it would come in useful.

Nick was keeping watch on the other side of the roof. He seemed to be brooding. When Rochelle approached him, he shook his head and said to her, "You'll see Zoey again, 100% chance. _Right_. Thank god he didn't ask me whether she'd be _alive _when he saw her again." He looked at Rochelle morosely. "Thanks for cutting in when you did. That was getting painful."

Rochelle sat down on a squat vent sticking out from the roof. "You said Zoey didn't have any wounds on her, Nick. What do you think she died of, then?"

"I'm pretty sure I know what she died of," Nick replied. He fished a vial out of his pocket and showed it to Rochelle. "I found this on the floor beside her body." It had contained fifty thirty-milligram doses of Dexedrine, a variant of methamphetamine. Government issue: the military had used it now and then, in situations where it would be worth a soldier's life to fall asleep. The label was crowded with warnings in tiny red type, setting the maximum dose per day at three capsules, and this dose on no account whatsoever to be continued longer than three consecutive days.

The vial was empty. Nick shook his head and put it back into his pocket. "I think she took the whole bottle," he said. "Or whatever was left in it when she found it. Not right at once, and not intentionally. She would have lost track of how many she'd taken and then she would have taken more. And more and more. You don't have to be trying to kill yourself. You get confused and forget how many you've already had. I've seen it happen before. And she was alone, no one to take the bottle away from her."

"So accidental suicide, so to speak?" _Like some two-bit pop star_, Rochelle thought bitterly.

"No," Nick replied. "At least not directly. That kind of overdose might have triggered a psychotic episode or two, but it probably wouldn't have killed her. She was too young and healthy for a heart attack, I think. But from the way she looked, she can't have eaten for at least a week. Amphetamines suppress the appetite. She wouldn't even have noticed her weakness until she started to keel over. Then she would have tried to deal with it with more pills. It doesn't take long. Not more than a few days if you forget to drink and sleep as well. She would have been so far gone at the end...it could have been just about anything that sent her over the edge."

Rochelle shuddered. "What an awful way to die. With rescue right in front of her. Pointless."

"I don't suppose she was in any pain, though. She probably just went to sleep in there and didn't wake up."

Rochelle didn't answer. She stayed silent for a long while, her head bowed, and so still that Nick wondered if she had drifted off into sleep herself. But she was awake.

She began to speak again, very softly, with her gaze still directed downward. "Nick... I'd like to say something, but I don't want to upset you."

Nick chuckled. "Well, _that's _good to hear. We've been there a few times in the past, haven't we? More than a few. Go on, give me your best shot."

"No... not like that. I'm serious. Please." Rochelle paused again. She looked directly at Nick, and he could see tears in her eyes. She began, sounding small and frightened, "_I envy her. _Zoey. She's well out of it now. Wherever she's gone, she's beyond their reach. _**But we aren't**_."

Her voice strengthened and became sharp, almost bitter. "I don't know what's going to happen to us in the end. They're evaluating us now. With shit jobs like this, stringing wires, linesman's work. But later they'll be sending us to... secret military labs, biowarfare centers... places that aren't officially supposed to exist. That never should have existed. Viruses, poisons, radiation, things we can't even imagine. Looking for where the infection came from. The odds will get worse and worse, and one day we'll lose. Die. I've seen these people at work before. We're nothing but tools to them. They'll use us until we break. That's our future."

Rochelle stopped abruptly. Had she said too much? She felt a sudden panic that Nick was going to brush aside her fears as trivial, or worse, laugh at them.

He didn't. When he replied, his tone was thoughtful. "You're right, Rochelle. Maybe it _would _be better to be dead. The odds _are _going to get worse. For me, it's still a challenge, a gamble, the biggest game I've ever had a stake in. But I can see a day coming when it won't be that interesting any longer."

"So what do we _do_?"

Nick got up and stretched. "Right now? Wake up those two and get some sleep ourselves. For the rest, unless you or one of the others has a better plan, I suggest we just keep on going. We have to play the cards we have, not the ones we wish we had." He shook his head and looked at Rochelle again. "You never know. We're holding a busted flush right now. The next hand we're dealt might be better."

Rochelle smiled. "You mean...hope."

Nick shrugged. "Sucker talk, I know. But it's all we've got right now. Let's get moving. We've got things to do and people to kick awake."

The helicopter arrived promptly at 0900, and landed, after the usual paranoid exchange about the possibility of the infected being in the vicinity. "That's why we're up on a roof, damn it," Nick had shouted to the pilot, silently adding a few adjectives denigrating the pilot's ancestry and intellectual capability. Their equipment loaded, it rose from the roof and flew east, into the sun, toward the carrier.

The four sat glumly in the passenger section. It was noisy, and no one felt much like talking. Rochelle wondered what was going on with Ellis. She'd expected a major outburst when they left, but he seemed to be taking things in stride.

Finally, Ellis turned to Nick.

"Nick, I was thinkin' of asking you, what d'ya think is a good size for the diamond on an engagement ring? So that's its impressive, you know, but not too flashy? Ah've no idea myself."

Nick thought for a moment. "I'd go for a half carat myself, but try to find a really good stone, and make sure it was well cut," he finally replied. "Quality means more than size. Low quality stones or ones that have been badly cut don't catch the light as well." He paused, and then added, "I'm partial to the ones with just a touch of blue in them myself. Goes well with dark hair."

"Thank you kindly, Nick," Ellis said, with a big grin on his face. "We never know when Zoey'll be calling, and ah want to be ahead of the game."

"Good idea," Nick said, in his most professional tone.

A few minutes passed in silence. Then Ellis suddenly looked up at the other three. "Did I ever tell you about the time Keith was lookin' for a ring for his girlfriend..."

"No," Rochelle replied. "But you can tell us now, Ellis. We've got all the time in the world."

**_the end_**


End file.
